The COVID-19 pandemic is disproportionately impacting the world’s most vulnerable. Among them are more than 70 million forcibly displaced people worldwide – refugees, asylum seekers, internally displaced people (IDPs), as well as migrant workers, including undocumented migrants. Many of these men, women and children live in formal and informal camps, reception centres, or in detention centres. Others live on the streets or underground in informal housing arrangements. Most lack access to basic services such as clean water, sanitation or inadequate access to healthcare, and many don’t have a legal status.

In many settings, displaced people live in insecurity, facing risk of arrest or abuse and may be stigmatised as ‘disease carriers’ against a backdrop of increased xenophobia, limited access to reliable information and are sometimes fully dependent on humanitarian aid. In many areas, such aid is limited. Thus, the impact of the pandemic both exacerbates and is exacerbated by the conditions in which they live.

Moreover, in many places the pandemic is being used as an excuse to punish people on the move, and those that seek to care for them. At least 167 states have fully or partially closed their borders to contain the spread of COVID-19 – 57 make no exception for people seeking asylum (UNHCR). People seeking safety and shelter are being turned away at land and on the sea – often returned or transferred to countries where they may face serious threats to their life or freedom. Together with border closure to limit the spread of the outbreak, many states are also purposely denying entry to asylum seekers or indirectly preventing their access.